Jakob-
> That means you can now edit Hilfe:Inhalt or
Aide:Aide like the English
> users have been editing Help:Contents. Why is that important? Because it
> allows us to easily export all the help files in one language, and import
> them into another wiki.
Import how? Do you want to make the Help:-Namespace on
local Wikipedia
read-only and dynamically mirror the localised pages from meta?
Yes, that would be one option.
Seems like a hen and egg problem.
I just doubt you get Wikipedia users writing
documentation at meta, because:
1. There is no single log-in (and with this a single
watchlist!)
A single login does not get you a single watchlist. There is currently
code for single signon in CVS (don't get too excited - we have no
migration code yet), but that will "only" allow you to re-use your user
data and session across all Wikimedia projects. A combined watchlist is a
project of its own.
Meta *is* our cross-project wiki. If we keep working around its
deficiencies we have less of an incentive to fix them. The more we use it
the larger the pressure will be to have things like single sign-on and a
proper internationalized interface. With the developer funding trial
starting soon, this could be not too far in the future.
2. You better document the Wikipedia you are working
on. This includes
documenting MediaWiki but there is no sense to seperate for a Wikipedian
What is Wikipedia documentation and what is MediaWiki documentation? To
me, Wikipedia "documentation" is mostly policies, community pages and the
like. These really belong uniformly in the Wikipedia: namespace and not on
Meta. (We may at some point try to develop a set of importable policies on
meta as well, but to me this is a project for a later stage.) None of this
belongs in Help:.
How do we get people involved in working on the Meta documentation? E.g.
on Wikipedia:
1) Remove all MediaWiki documentation from the Wikipedia: namespace
2) Redirect and link to local Help: pages where needed.
3) Add a [[Template:Obsolete]] to all local Help: pages:
"The documentation is currently being consolidated on
http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myhelpnamespace:Contents - please do not
edit these pages anymore and edit directly on meta instead."
4) Protect all Help: pages.
So, essentially, by locking people out from doing it locally ;-). It will
be a bit ugly in the transition phase but it's certainly workable.
I tried to integrate MediaWiki and Wikipedia
documentation at
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Hilfe:Inhalt
but I better do it within the German Wikipedia in the Help-Namespace.
The Help: namespace of individual projects should not be used for editing
but for importing only (maybe some custom Help: pages and some header/
footer changes, but that's it). The Project: namespace is for project-
specific information.
Once the pages have stabilized, we should clean out
the meta:Hilfe
namespaces and import the de:Hilfe pages instead. We can then
upgrade them regularly (even daily) and automatically on all wikis.
Wikimedia is more than just Wikipedia. That's the whole point of putting
it on meta - not giving preference to any individual project in
maintaining the documentation. For a Wiktionary, Wikibooks, Wikiquote or
Wikisource user, editing pages on Wikipedia is no easier than editing them
on Meta.
Wikipedia is a bad foundation to build cross-project documentation on. As
projects like Wikibooks grow and new ones like Wikinews are started, its
prominence in the Wikimedia world will decline. To a Wikinews editor of
2005, Wikipedia may be what Wikisource is to most Wikipedians - an
interesting project but not their primary point of interest.
Furthermore, the best way to educate our editors that this is a cross-
project documentation is to put it on Meta:. As long as editors have a
feeling that they are editing on Wikipedia, they will write specifically
*about* Wikipedia.
Regards,
Erik